Space monitoring center at Southern Federal Univ.

Russia: UniScan ground receiving station, that will be the core of the Space Monitoring Center in Southern Federal University, was successfully put into operation on December 12 at the Southern Federal University (SFU) premises in Rostov-Upon-Don. Small aperture universal UniScan station will promote fresh remote sensing data application in scientific and educational processes at SFU.

UniScan receiving complex – is the competitive development of the Russian Research and Development Center ScanEx. Thanks to UniScan complex the university will get access to images of the American Terra satellite (MODIS imaging system – Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), which delivers telemetry in 36 spectral bands at the resolution of 250, 500 and 1000 m.

The receiving complex is complete with software, enabling to resolve tasks of reception, initial processing, archiving and cataloging of space data and creation of thematic products with further export into popular GIS formats and software applications.

Along with UniScan station, ScanEx specialists have installed at the Southern Federal University a geoportal, developed based on the popular kosmosnimki.ru web-service. IRS Indian satellites’ images at 5.8 m resolution were used to create the baseline coverage of this portal, with covers the territory of the entire Rostov Region. Highly detailed mosaics of IKONOS satellite (0.8 m resolution) will be available in this geoportal, covering Rostov-Upon-Don and its suburbs, as well as Landsat space program data (15 n resolution) for the territory of all Southern Federal District.

The engine of the geoportal – ScanEx Web GeoMixer – enables to combine different data types in one on-line project, to operate with raster and vector formats simultaneously, to add metadata databases and to do a search through these databases. In its turn, UniScan receiving complex allows the user to add and to update geoportal data in real-time mode.

– Set of functional tools, based on ScanEx Web GeoMixer tehcnology, enables to create an information search system to resolve a wide range of tasks, – says ScanEx’s Kosmosnimki Department Head Mikhail Potanin.

According to SFU development program for 2007-2010, “improvements in scientific and research processes are aimed at the creation of conditions for new quality level professional training on priority education, generation of scientific and educational elite in the region and in entire Russia, spurring up activities in sphere of science”.

Space Monitoring Center of Southern Federal University will allow resolving both educational tasks (specialists training and refresher training in sphere of Earth remote sensing and GIS) and region territory monitoring issues (ground station footprint is over 2000 km in radius).

“We hope that in future Space Monitoring Centers will become a standard structural element of all federal universities in our country” said ScanEx Vice-President Olga Gershenzon.